A STELLAR AFFAIR (A Hollywood Bad Boy Romance) (16 page)

He grinned mysteriously and leaned back in his chair, looking at her lazily. “It does. But I have yet to put that to the test. Haven’t had a woman I can consume in large quantities for years…and years.”

Oh boy, how their topic turned into a foreplay, she didn’t know. Chatting with Wes was like walking on a mine field full of sexual boobie traps. One moment he was serious, the next he was perving her in the middle of a freaking restaurant full of customers! But it was her fault. She shouldn’t have asked about her taste in women. Gosh, how tacky of her! But she had to admit, she kind of liked his answer.

So, did that mean the man was capable of sticking with one woman for years and years?

Oh no…speculating about a future with Wes Stoner is a bottomless sink hole. Be careful.

She was surprised when he reached out and took her hand in his.

He leaned close to her and murmured softly, his eyes, sincere. “I want us to enjoy this night like normal people. Forget Stoneryder. Just us.”

She understood and she was glad he expressed it, because she was exhausted from pretending to be smitten with him for the benefit of the public.

But you ARE smitten with him.

I don’t want to pretend that I am. I want to be just ME. Even just for a few hours.

She smiled.
“I’m down with that.”

By the time dinner was over,
she’d laughed so much she forgot the time and place. She hoped the customers covertly taking pictures and videos of them on their cellphones hadn’t recorded her giggling like a giddy teenager from Wes’ jokes.

God, he can really be a super fun company once he’d turned on the jester in him. She could imagine them laughing together just like this while gazing at the sunset or doing the most mundane things.

There you go again.

Shut up. Don’t rain on my parade. Not tonight.

Tonight, she realized, maybe, just maybe they could be friends, at least, in the real sense of the word. Maybe they could keep that friendship even after Stoneryder was over.

 
Maybe.

They left the restaurant in his Maserati and cruised around the city. He rolled the top of his car down and for the first time in years, she let the humid air of downtown Los Angeles mess with her hair. She sighed and enjoyed the wind on her face.

“I think the paps are tailing us,” she said.

“Do you care?”

“Nah. Let them shoot away.” She raised her arms in the wind and shouted, “Whoooohooooo!!!”

He chuckled and revved up the engine.

Oh god, please don’t let this night end too soon.

He walked with her to the door,
their fingers, laced together.

She had a happy bounce in her steps and she couldn’t help it. She really had fun with him tonight.

He stared at her as they stood facing each other on the portico of her mansion.

“I really had fun tonight,” he said.

She smiled. “Me, too.”

He looked at their hands, squeezing her fingers. “I’ll be gone for a week. I’m leaving the next day.”

She swallowed. “Where…are you going?”

“Vegas. I’m shooting some scenes there.”

She didn’t know this. Reena didn’t tell her and she was disappointed. “I see. Okay…”

Silence.

The awkwardness crept back, filling the undefined gray areas between them.

“So…I’ll just see you when you get back…maybe?” she tried to make her tone light, even as a sinking feeling of emptiness started to embrace her like a lonely blanket.

The look he gave her was inscrutable. He was rather pensive now, after sharing too many laughs with her all evening. “You will definitely see me when I get back. Stoneryder has two months, remember?”

She tried to smile casually. “Yeah…right.”

“You take care, Empress.”

She nodded. “You, too.”

He leaned over and she raised her face to meet his kiss, but he put his lips on her forehead instead.

“Goodnight, Av.”

“Goodnight.”

He walked back to his car and she didn’t know why her chest was constricting so badly, her throat, tightening and hurting, and tears were about to drench her eyes.

She blinked rapidly, inhaling deeply, fighting the melancholy that assaulted her as he drove away.

C
hapter
E
leven

The jet touched down in Vegas.

Ava’s tummy was humming with the usual butterfly action that she was quite familiar with now. Just the thought of Wes Stoner would send her hormones into overdrive. It was infuriating, to be assaulted by these weak feelings where the man was concerned but it was reality she had to face and deal with. She’d been trying. Harder than necessary. So far, her hormones had ignored her memo. They only listened to their needs. Needs that had been keeping her nights, sleepless and her days, restless.

Wes Stoner entered her life and turned it upside down within a night and now, she can never go back to what she was before, the Ava Ryder who controlled everything. Right now, something had taken over her life, her career and it was a growing monster she couldn’t contain, just like the one who spawned it.

Wes Stoner breathed fire into her. She was a driven artist, but her passion was solely directed toward her music, but that was just about the fire she could
 
bring to life. She started believing it too, that maybe she indeed lacked something vital in her to make a man stay with her. No man she’d dated had the patience to stay long enough to bring out her inner fire. They all wanted a piece of her right away. Bragging rights, maybe. They wanted to be the one to claim they’d bedded her first.
 

Truth be told, she was okay without a man in her life but her PR team disagreed. She was in the business of entertainment, of looking and acting desirable and sought-after. The competition was tough in her genre and she had to maintain a certain sex symbol image. She was averse to dating for some time so she’d resorted to just hiring pretend boyfriends.This set up had worked so far and no “ex” of hers had talked about her sex life anymore as they all signed non-disclosure agreements.

When she hired Wes, she expected the same routine—get together, do business and split when they’d both gotten what they wanted from the deal. But Wes was different from all the men she’d been with in the past, business or otherwise. Stoneryder was leaving everything else in the dust. It dominated the rags, the gossip blogs, all the social media and even made it to the NYP’s Page Six.
 

She didn’t know what it was that had caused this extreme fascination of Stoneryder. The Ryders had always been solid and she’d never doubted their undying support. They put all her albums at the #1 spot all these years. She’d been with other famous men before but hadn’t stirred this kind of hysteria among her fans.

Stoneryder was received well by the Ryders. They were all giddy for her. But the Stoners were having a different reaction. Half of them hated her for snagging their virtual boyfriend and they’d been taking their disappointment to the social media and the rumor mills were grinding madly 24/7, milking the issue for all its worth.
 

That dinner date had broken the internet again. She didn’t think it was possible, but the picture where she was laughing like she had no care in the world while Wes looked at her with a warm smile on his face was scrapbook perfect that even she had sighed with a bittersweet feeling when she saw it.
 

Reena had been filling her in on the buzz while she worked with her creative team at the studio.
 

The mania over Stoneryder was unprecedented that even she was overwhelmed by it all.
 

She finally forced her ass back to work. She was in the final stages of conceptualizing her music video with Wes. They’d start shooting when he got back in L.A.

Wes was in Vegas for a week to continue shooting his superhero movie. Her PR team had decided it was time for a new Stoneryder sighting. According to the latest script, she was missing Wes so much she dropped everything she was doing in L.A. to be reunited with him in Vegas.

And now here she was in Vegas. And she didn’t know what to do. She was an even sorrier mental mess than she was last week. Wes Stoner was a situation she didn’t know how to deal with anymore and no amount of self-pep talk and reviewing her Sun Tzu strategies had helped clear and organize the chaos that was her mind. Even learning that Skylar re-scheduled her perfume launching to avoid being overshadowed by Stoneryder failed to give her a sense of payback.

She missed the bastard so much she was dying.

“Av?”

She looked up at Reena who was standing beside her.
 

“The door’s open.”

She blinked and noticed her chartered jet’s attendants were now carrying her stuff to the exit where the pilot and her bodyguard were waiting.
 

She unfastened her seatbelt and stood up. “Let’s go.”

“Vegas, watch out. Stoneryder has arrived,” Reena murmured excitedly.

Wes didn’t know he’d been
holding his breath until he saw her emerge from the plane and he actually exhaled slowly.

Fuck. Ten days. It felt like forever.
 

He went to meet her halfway, trying not to sprint toward her and take her in his arms like a soldier who hadn’t seen his woman for an entire tour. He was restless, anxious and hungry.

He knew discreet cams were rolling for this episode of Stoneryder in Vegas. Well and good because this was going to be a helluva show.

He reached her and everything ceased to exist.

“Hello, Empress,”

“Hello, bad boy.”

She was so fucking beautiful, all blonde, golden skin, rosy lips and baby blues that stared at him like she truly missed him.

He pulled her toward him. She gasped.

The moment their bodies touched, heat exploded. He didn’t know who kissed first. But he was lost in her sweet, sweet lips. Soft, tasting of some candy—mocha chocolate. Defuckinglicious!

She moaned and looped her arms around his neck and the airport could have exploded around them and they wouldn’t have noticed, so lost they were in each other.